Wednesday, December 05, 2012

Toppling The Regime

The BBC's Jon Leyne in Cairo: "It's been a very ugly scene"

Toppling The Regime

The angry clashes between the new Muslim Brotherhood-led government of President Mohammed Morsi and the ever-increasing gatherings of protesters outraged at the autocratic liberties their saviour from tyranny has taken upon himself and his Freedom and Justice party has now been responsible for three deaths and 350 injuries to protesters.

These protests, paradoxically, are hosting hundreds of thousands of Cairenes who feel that freedom and justice has latterly deserted them.

They had anticipated far better things to result from the removal of former President Hosni Mubarak and the muting of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces whose power has been successfully challenged by President Morsi through a standoff that saw him wresting control and the generals standing down from their power perch of a generation and more.

The more that President Morsi digs in his heels and refuses to temper his edict giving himself power above the law, the greater the rage of the Egyptian movements representing liberal ideals, secularists, Christian Copts and increasingly, ordinary Egyptian citizens who take huge umbrage at the past moving into their futures. They hoped to do far better than to have a secular tyranny replaced by a theocratic dictatorship.

The leaders of the opposition, Mohamed ElBaradei and Amr Mousa, failed presidential candidates, blame the current government completely for the breakdown in law and order, for the critical atmosphere of civil dissent and disorder. "Our opinion was, and still is, that we are ready for dialogue if the constitutional decree is cancelled ... and the referendum of this constitution is postponed", said Mr. ElBaradei.

"The revolution did not happen for this. It happened for freedom, democracy and human dignity. Morsi must listen to the people, whose voice is loud and clear. There is no legitimacy in excluding the majority of the people." A rather grandiose statement, since Egypt's population is 80-million and it's a huge leap to imagine that a majority of that number wishes to aspire to a political system more approximating a democracy than the pretense that currently exists.

But the protesters are committed, they are responding with the zeal of offended hornets, stinging with the furious words of denial, insisting that the current reigning government desist and depart. Marching on Tahrir square chanting "Erhal, erhal" (Leave, leave") along with "The people want to topple the regime", chants recognizable as the very same that were popularized during the 2010-2011 revolt that took the Mubarak regime from power."We haven't made any decisions yet, but I'm leaning against a boycott and toward voting 'no'", said Hossam al-Hamalawy, whose party, the Socialist Revolutionaries was a key group behind last year's Arab Spring uprising. "We want a [new] constituent assembly that represents the people and we keep up the pressure on Morsi".

This is "The Last Warning" labelled by organizers taking advantage of the popular anger over the draft charter and decrees Morsi issued generating sweeping powers for himself, placing him above judicial oversight.